Literature in the Modern World: Critical Essays and Documents

by Dennis Walder (Editor)

• Used

  Illustrated
  2004

  $3.27

  This text offers a unique combination of British, European, American and Post-Colonial perspectives on literary study from the 1920s to the present day. Carefully introduced and arranged to highlight the development of debates, it is designed to engage newcomers to the field with some of the main themes and issues that will concern them as readers of modern literary texts of all genres. The book provides material that is exciting, original, and above all accessible, rather than simply representative of a certain critical approach. It includes the views of leading critics such as Terry Eagleton, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Umberto Eco and Paul de Man, as well as the originating voices of writers such as Bertolt Brecht, Jean-Paul Sartre, Toni Morrison and Salman Rushdie. In the second edition, there is an increased focus on questions of gender and identity and on recent debates, such as 'Literature and Nation' and 'Literature and Value'. The reach and relevance of the book has been extended, taking a more international voice, focusing on American and European writers and critics.

• Used

  Paperback
  1990

  $3.27

  Literature in the Modern World offers a unique combination of English, European, feminist and `new writing', or `Commonwealth', perspectives on literary studies from the 1920s to the 1980s. It is designed to enable students to gain an understanding of the main theoretical issues involved in the study of modern literary texts. The texts upon which the critical essays here focus are - chiefly, but not exclusively, in English. The book includes the view of leading critics and theorists such as Marilyn Butler, Frank Kermode, H 'el `ene Cixous, and Edward Said, as well as the originating voices of Wole Soyinka, Toni Morrison, Seamus Heaney, and Virginia Woolf, and focuses on major critical topics including genre, interpretation, history and criticism, gender, race, and the notion of `Englishness'. This approach derives from a perceived change in what constitutes `English literature' in a period of British imperial decline and takes account of the rise of a radical, questioning critical and literary practice at home and abroad. The more abstract and abstruse contemporary critics are eschewed in favour of extracts of sufficient length, force, and clarity to offer relative newcomers the opportunity of engaging with a wide range of current issues. The book covers the Open University course A319. This book is intended for all Open University third-level course A319 students; teachers, graduate and undergraduate students of twentieth-century literature - English, European, Commonwealth - and of women's studies.